Despair Suicide Despair

Strip

36
April 26, 2009
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dsd

I found it always kinda funny what teachers could interpret in a banal image and what overdimensional quantities of statements they could see in it. Well, now I'll try to do the same thing with my own comic strip.

First it isn't enough to just read the speech bubbles. To understand it you must read the small and seemingly trivial text on the displays. The same way our freedom disappears in small and undetectable steps. Here a little rule, there a little restriction. And in the end it all comes together to a gigantic change. I'm curious how the internet will look in a few years.

And if this development of restrictions continues for a few decades there will probably arrive the day where you even don't have a free access to the most important and fundamental things and don't understand how this could happen. Water or food, because your behaviour doesn't match the expectations of your superior. Daylight, because the sky outside may distract you from your work. Or the toilet, because after all this takes important time. And time is money.

But such a world of complete control can only work if you know everything that happens. So you must have something that gives you this informations. Like cams. Everywhere cams, no information's allowed to get lost. You can't do anything without someone else knowing about it. And if you want to step into the dark to have some privacy there may be be something that still reflects some light on you. And if it's nothing more than a puddle of water from a leaking toilet. How many cities are already littered with cams? How many countries save all kind of data from internet users?

Oh, and something I appreciated when making this comic: I didn't have to draw the eyes and mouths. Every character is seen from behind. Imagine how it would feel if all the time there would be someone standing behind your back and watching you. I hate this feeling.

After some time you would surely became paranoid. You would start to suspect everyone else of being a potential enemy. And so think the others about you. Did you see the employee trying to look around the wall of books on the desk? And the periscope of some guy in the foreground? And the weird one sitting behind the grid in the wall on the last panel? You better watch your environment. And if you want to protect yourself by building walls of books, in fact, you just get less and less freedom.

You can only hope that maybe you will be able to find some hidden place, like the one besides the snack automat. With a little bit of chance you will be able to play a round of Tic Tac Toe or Hangman and have some fun. But unfortunately, playing in the dark is rather groping in the dark.


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